Tacofino

In June 2009 three founders, Jason Sussman, Kaeli Robinsong and Amy Bockner, put a single orange food truck on the Pacific Rim Highway at 1184 Pacific Rim Hwy in Tofino. The highway runs from the village out toward the surf beaches and the national park, so the truck caught everyone driving between town and the water. It worked.

What began as one truck grew into a brand with roughly a dozen locations across British Columbia, including spots in Victoria and Langford, and every one of them traces back to this Tofino highway stop.

The Original Truck Is Still There

The remarkable part of the story is continuity. The original truck is still at 1184 Pacific Rim Hwy, serving from the same stretch of road where the company started. That makes it a genuine piece of Tofino food history rather than a marketing story, and it is the reason many visitors make the short drive out of the village even when the Campbell Street location is closer to their accommodation.

If you want the origin point, this is it.

From Truck to BC Brand

Growth did not mean abandoning the format. Tacofino still describes its food as West Coast Beach Food on its own site, a phrase that fits a company born beside the road to the beach. The Tofino locations keep the same hours, Sun-Sat 11am-7pm, and the brand now runs online ordering through Toast plus a loyalty program across its network.

Contact goes through feedback@tacofino.com, and the company is active on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn. For context on the wider dining scene, our best restaurants in Tofino list covers the sit-down end of town.

The Highway Truck

The truck at 1184 Pacific Rim Hwy is the original, standing since June 2009 at GPS 49.109541, -125.874726. You order at the window and eat outside or take your food to go, which suits anyone heading to or from the beaches along the highway. The location puts it across the road from the Tofino Botanical Gardens at 1084 Pacific Rim Hwy, so the two make an easy pairing on the same drive.

Expect a line on summer days, which is exactly why the company's own loyalty program pitches ordering ahead. If you are combining the truck with a walk, our Tofino Botanical Gardens guide covers the gardens across the road.

The Campbell Street Location

The second Tofino location at 450 Campbell St sits in the village at GPS 49.152697, -125.903138, and it is a sit-down spot rather than a window truck. You order inside and take a table, which makes it the better pick on a wet west coast day or if you are staying in town and do not want to drive the highway. It keeps the same daily hours as the truck, Sun-Sat 11am-7pm.

Campbell Street also puts you within walking distance of other village stops, including Wolf in the Fog further along for dinner later on.

What the site publishes is specific: two Tofino addresses, one set of hours for both, an online ordering system, a loyalty program, and a self-description as West Coast Beach Food. Every one of those facts appears in the sections above with its source noted. What the site does not publish is just as specific: no menu, no prices, no dish list, no seating count, no wait-time estimate.

That gap is deliberate on the company's part, most food-truck operations of this size set prices at the till or on a physical menu board rather than online, and Tacofino is no exception. This page will not guess at numbers to fill that gap. If you want a dollar figure, the window or the till is the only reliable source, and that is true whether you order at the truck or through Toast.

It is worth placing Tacofino inside the wider story of Tofino food trucks, because the town produced more than one national name from a gravel lot. Tacofino began in June 2009 on the highway. SoBo, founded in 2003 by chef Lisa Ahier as a purple truck behind a Tofino surf shop, moved briefly near the Botanical Gardens before settling into its bricks-and-mortar home at 311 Neill Street in 2007, and SoBo was one of the first food trucks ever named to enRoute Magazine's Top 10 Best New Restaurants in Canada.

Tacofino followed a similar arc from truck to brand, just at a larger scale, eventually reaching roughly a dozen locations province-wide. Two trucks, six years apart, from a town small enough to walk end to end, is a genuinely unusual concentration of food history for a place with a 2021 census population of 2,516.

That 7pm close, printed on tacofino.com/locations for both the highway truck and the Campbell Street spot, rules Tacofino out as a late dinner option. It works well for lunch after a morning on the water, or for an early dinner before a sunset walk, but anyone planning a 9pm meal needs a different address entirely, our where to eat in Tofino guide covers the restaurants that stay open later. The upside of the earlier close is a shorter line later in the day.

Visitors who hit the highway truck in the last hour before closing often report less of a wait than the midday rush, though the company itself states no queue data, so treat that as a planning tip rather than a published fact.

The 11am opening also matters for anyone building a full day around the two Tofino locations. Neither location serves breakfast, so a morning boat check-in or an early beach walk needs a different stop first, Rhino Coffee House or Common Loaf Bake Shop cover that end of the day. Tacofino fits the middle of the day cleanly: lunch after a morning activity, or an early dinner before the light fades, which on this coast can be as early as late afternoon outside summer.

The company states no recommended time, so the table below is our estimate based on how each option works. Ordering at a window or counter is quick on paper, but the highway truck draws a line in summer, per the brand's own loyalty-program pitch to skip it by ordering ahead. If your day is tight, use the Toast online ordering on tacofino.com and collect your food at either location.

The queue itself is the one variable worth planning around. The company's loyalty program exists specifically to let repeat customers skip ahead by ordering through the app, which tells you the wait is real enough that the company built a product around avoiding it. If you are on a tight schedule between a boat check-in and a beach stop, order through Toast before you arrive rather than joining the line cold.